GEORGIAN-AZERBAIJANI HAZARDOUS TRICKS
Vardan Grigoryan

Hayoc Ashkharh
19 Sept 2007

September 17, Tbilisi: Georgia and Azerbaijan signed a bilateral
agreement on military cooperation. This is a new phenomenon in the
whole history of cooperation between our neighbors.

The discussions held previously with the purpose of extending
the military cooperation between Azerbaijan and Georgia began to
take a more practical from as far back as in July 2006, when David
Kazerashvili, Defense Minister of Georgia was in Baku. The clear-cut
Armenian origins of his family name appeared to be no obstacle to
his visiting Baku and conducting negotiations on military cooperation
between the two countries.

And this September the Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Safar Abiev was
on a two-day visit in Tbilisi. He first had a closed meeting with
David Kazerashvili; thereafter the negotiations continued with an
extended format.

The agenda included the Georgian-Azerbaijani bilateral military
cooperation program, envisaged for 2008. After the meeting the
Georgian Defense Minister D. Kazerashvili announced that "during
the tËte-Á-tËte between the two Ministers the problems of military
cooperation and regional security were discussed."

This kind of general formulation which is still uninformative does not
certainly reveal the contents of the Georgian-Azerbaijani agreement
signed on September 17. However, the fact that the tËte-Á-tËte
between the two countries’ Defense Ministers was confidential and
that Safar Abiev visited Georgia’s new military fulcrum situated in
the town of Senaki immediately following the meeting with President
M. Sahakashvili, provides some clues to the political trend of the
agreement signed. The military fulcrum built recently in Senaki,
Megrelia in accordance with the NATO standards is considered one of
the two principal fulcra of Georgia’s potential operations against
Abkhazia.

We believe that after familiarizing himself with Georgia’s rich
experience in the fight against the "Abkhazian separatist policy"
the Azeri Defense Minister may also desire to have a similar fulcrum
built for instance in Yevlakh or Mirbashir in accordance with the NATO
standards. It only rests with us to assume that David Kazerashvili may
also pay a visit here in the near future with the purpose of exchanging
this kind of "advanced experience". If the Azerbaijani Defense Minister
prefers to visit a military fulcrum targeted at Abkhazia, he may,
in the nearest future, invite his Georgian counterpart to one of the
Azerbaijani fulcra situated on the approaches of Nagorno Karabakh.

Thus, it is possible to assume that one of the pivotal clauses of the
Georgian-Azerbaijani agreement signed in Tbilisi on September 17 is
the idea of the so-called "armed separatism".

The following question comes up: does this mean that the mutual
sympathy between the two collapsed post-Soviet "empires" is currently
changing into a specific "agreement on mutual assistance". And
if it is true, how will Armenia pursue its policy aimed at close
economic-communicative integration with Georgia, the last evidence
of such policy being the Kocharyan-Sahakashvili meeting that was held
in Batumi literally a few days ago?

It is also very easy to notice that the specific political
prospect emanating from the Georgian-Azerbaijani agreement
on military cooperation are not inside the triangle of the
Georgian-Azerbaijani-Armenian relations; they are within the context
of NATO’s prospects of extending to the East. They also tackle the
interests of the regional role-players, i.e. Russia and Turkey. For
the former this is one of the signals of NATO’s nearest extension
to the Caucasus, while for the latter this is a new opportunity of
strengthening its positions in the region.

We believe that together with the attempts aimed at transferring the
former political and economic cooperation to the military sphere,
our two neighbors, are shouldering an equally heavy burden, having
armed themselves so intensively during the recent period. This kind
of heavy burden is first of all harmful to Georgia which, instead
of solving its problems with Abkhazia and South Ossia, is becoming
faced with the danger of creating new ones.

For us, the official Tbilisi’s choice has certainly been and will
continue to remain the sovereign right of our neighboring country.

Provided, however, Georgia maintains its neutral attitude towards
the Armenian-Azerbaijani confrontation.

–Boundary_(ID_KO/TK7lQbIeEEmmUDvR BTQ)–

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress